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2017 - Free tools List yours

round2it

By round2it
in How do you do....it?

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NB9457

NB9457

Posted
Posted

I use/have used:

 

-Hirens Boot CD, Great for resetting local passwords and testing hardware

-Spiceworks, think we all know this is feature packed

-Angry IP Scanner, scans IP ranges and tells you which IPs are live and gives the ID of devices

-Freshdesk, honestly the best most simple and effective helpdesk I've used, cloud based and free

 

Lets not forget the biggest tool, edugeek itself, I'd probably be pretty lost without it now! :o

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jthompson

jthompson

Posted
Posted (edited)

Some of these might be old hat now, but they're still just the thing when I need them.

 

Remove Empty Directories (RED) - Scans for and/or removes empty directories. Useful for spring cleaning shared areas.

mRemoteNG - Multi-protocol remote connections manager. All your RDP, SSH, etc. sessions in one tabbed window.

Solarized - Not really a utility, just a really nice colour scheme with light and dark modes that you can use in lots of places (Notepad++ comes with it).

NTFSFix - Getting on a bit, but I've used this to set permissions on batches of user areas. It can use wildcards, which helps in setting user-specific permissions to each folder in turn.

Bulk AD Users - Useful for bulk updating users in Active Directory. Let's you do things that can't be done in ADUC.

KeePass Password Safe - Stores passwords, usernames, URLs, licence codes, etc. Can be run as a portable app and supports multiple concurrent users, so great for teams.

Scanner - A nice disk usage visualisation utility. I prefer it to TreeSize.

Attribute Changer - Bulk updating of file attributes. e.g. setting 'modified' or 'created' date on image files to match the 'Date taken' value from its EXIF.

Bulk Rename Utility - Very comprehensive options for bulk renaming files.

DVD Flick - DVD authoring. Still using this a lot!

Edited by jthompson
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Matt_Renato

Matt_Renato

Posted
Posted
Notepad++ - My favourite application when it comes to editing scripts / config files. The syntax highlighting makes editing much easier and it's got a handy plugin system which allows you to do a whole host of other cool stuff.
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Arthur

Arthur

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Posted (edited)
Keep them comin

A few more for you. :)

 

SysInternals Suite - Includes Process Explorer, Process Monitor, PsExec, AD Explorer, Autoruns (and many other tools) in one handy .zip file.

NirLauncher - Similar to the above, but for all of the 200+ NirSoft tools.

CyberChef - An incredibly useful web-based text & data manipulation app that is really hard to describe in one sentence since it can do so much.

 

Microsoft VSCode - Currently my favourite text/code editor. Compared to Notepad++ it also has a wider range of extensions available. The PowerShell extension is particularly good since it gives you the ability to run .ps1 scripts within the editor like the PowerShell ISE included with Windows.

Notepad2-mod - A fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. Supports replacing Notepad in Windows using a clean, unintrusive registry-based method.

 

Bash on Ubuntu on Windows (a.k.a. WSL) - Run Linux programs natively within Windows 10 without a VM. Also great for SSH'ing into other systems/network devices without having to resort to PuTTY.

DISM++ - DISM GUI and Windows image (.wim) editor.

Windows Update MiniTool / WHDownloader - Download updates for Windows and Office.

 

7-Zip (and 7za.exe) - Open source file archiver.

ContextConsole - Adds an "Open Elevated Command Prompt" option to the context menus in Windows Explorer.

Double Driver - Driver backup and restore utility.

FFmpeg - Video converter that can convert/transcode almost anything.

HashCheck - A shell extension for quickly and easily calculating/verifying checksums and hashes from Windows Explorer.

HxD - Hex and disk editor.

ImgBurn - Used mainly these days for burning data to CDs/DVDs for exam boards.

InstEd - MSI editor for creating MSTs. Better than Microsoft's Orca.

PowerRun - Run programs with the same privileges as TrustedInstaller or NT Authority/SYSTEM.

RClone - A command line program to sync files/folders to, from and between different cloud storage providers.

ReNamer - File renaming utility that has a much nicer UI than Bulk Rename Utility (which I find poorly designed and visually overwhelming).

Rufus - A utility to format and create bootable USB flash drives from ISOs and other disk image files.

SetACL Studio - Easily view/change permissions on files, folders, registry keys, printers, network shares, services and WMI objects.

ShareX - Excellent screen capture and image sharing tool.

ZPaq - Incremental journaling backup utility and archiver. Useful if you need to create an archive with better compression than what the 7z format offers.

 

WizTree - Similar to TreeSize but much faster since it reads the NTFS MFT (like Everything) to list the largest files and folders on the specified disk.

SpaceSniffer - A disk space usage analyser similar to WinDirStat but better because it actually displays the filenames in the treemap!

FileOptimizer - Recompresses/optimizes files to reduce disk space. Supports a very wide range of file types.

PNGGauntlet - Combines PNGOUT, OptiPNG, and DeflOpt to losslessly recompress PNGs.

 

PingCastle - Active Directory security audit tool.

Edited by Arthur
  • Thanks 9
Bedders

Bedders

Posted
Posted

Couple more:

 

Driver Sweeper Download - Guru3D Driver Sweeper, can be used to remove problematic video drivers completely. Used to be mandatory for AMD drivers several years ago :)

 

CPU-Z | Softwares | CPUID - CPU-Z, useful tool for getting all of the CPU information

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ - GPU-Z, useful tool for getting all of the GPU information including drivers.

https://www.piriform.com/speccy - Speccy, can retrieve system information and some product keys.

 

Open Hardware Monitor - Core temp, fan speed and voltages in a free software gadget - OpenHardwareMonitor, view temperatures and fan speeds within your system. Can be minimised to the SysTray and can display any temperature in your tray rather than the icon.

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jthompson

jthompson

Posted
Posted
For configuration, deployment, documentation and automation: ansible is hard to beat:

 

https://www.ansible.com/

 

Would love to be able to use this. It's such a cool name for a piece of software! Would be interested in the extent to which you use it. Do you manage Windows client machines with it, for instance?

Our switches are Netgear, without any CLI, so I've never looked too hard at these automated config management systems as I don't think they'd work with them.

LeMarchand

LeMarchand

Posted
Posted

Some I use (hopefully not duplicating any above!). Only included the "work" type ones. Most of these are also available in portable/no installation versions.

 

Advanced Renamer - My favoutite for bulk renaming

Audacity - Audio file manipulation

CD Burner XP - Make sure you use the slim version

Easy2Boot - Most successful USB multiboot creator I've found

Heavyload - Stress testing

HiJackThis - Still comes in useful for rooting out malware

JDisk Report - Easy to understand disk usage graphs

Ketarin - Takes a while to set up, but saves a lot of time if you have a large library of software to update - nearly all my "regulars" are updateable using this

Patch Cleaner - Useful for low capacity drives

Shell Tools - Adds some right-click options I find useful

SterJo Keyfinder - Had more luck with this than some others

SUMO - Crowdsourced update information; make sure you use the lite version

SuperSimpleVideoConverter - Easy to use converter

TeraCopy - For when you don't want to trust Windows with large amounts of files

VeraCrypt - Still useful if you can't use BitLocker

VLC - I'm sure everyone uses this, but it does a lot more than just play files

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JJonas

JJonas

Posted
Posted

Snappy Drivers - uses P2P Technology to download the drivers so you might need to initially set it up and update it at home, its just over 13Gb download at the moment

 

Install missing drivers and update old drivers

 

If you've lost your driver discs, you're unable to find drivers on the manufacturer's web site or Windows Update can't configure your hardware, use this tool to quickly find and install all missing drivers.

 

If you're a PC technician, keep Snappy Driver Installer on your USB flash drive or external hard drive and take it with you wherever you go. In environments with no Internet access you can quickly get things working. No more searching for drivers after a clean install, just let Snappy Driver Installer do it's thing and your job will be done in no time.

 

https://sdi-tool.org/

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ollyyllo

ollyyllo

Posted
Posted (edited)

Does TronScript (large script that disinfects and patches windows) count?

 

Not really useful at work, but can save time when fixing friends\family laptops.

Edited by ollyyllo
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mjk

mjk

Posted
Posted
Would love to be able to use this. It's such a cool name for a piece of software! Would be interested in the extent to which you use it. Do you manage Windows client machines with it, for instance?

Our switches are Netgear, without any CLI, so I've never looked too hard at these automated config management systems as I don't think they'd work with them.

 

It's basically a one stop shop. You can use it for windows, linux,OSX and even network switches, firewall management and managing virtual machines EC2, azure, vmware - you name it. It's really powerful.

If you've not got CLI (ssh) on the switches it might not work though.

It's like a swiss army knife for a sysadmin. I'm totally hooked.

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